What’cha want?
Let’s have a brainstorming session. I’ve been tinkering around with a few old ideas that are going nowhere, and it’s been ages since I’ve released an extension. What is it that you’d like to see in an extension, but doesn’t exist yet?
The clear answer would be to fix up my old ones, like making Always Remember Password play nice with all sites, or allowing Word Count to work within a text box. Well, I have been trying to get them to behave in a more efficient manner, but I’m not there yet.
So in the mean time, I need a new idea. Maybe the solution to an old problem is best seen through a fresh pair of eyes. So hit me with some potential extensions. Hell, if I make one I’ll even contribute you in the source for initial concept.
Go.
May 3rd, 2005 at 5:48 am
It would be interesting to see a sidebar that could be unattached from the Firefox window, resized, and moved anywhere inside the current Firefox window via clicking the title bar and dragging. Though, I don’t know just how useful that might be…
All the simpler (and lots of the more complex) extensions have already been written, and coming up with an idea is kind of difficult now. I like to give creating a new extension a thought from time to time, and eventually something will hit me while I’m browsing the Web or working on something. Sitting down and thinking about what Firefox needs doesn’t usually help much at all.
May 3rd, 2005 at 5:53 am
I would like an extension that allows various groups of tabs. For example I would like to create a group of tabs for comics. This would load all my comics on different tab. Then I could set up a group of tabs for newspapers, university, news sites, or sports sites.
May 3rd, 2005 at 7:13 am
I dropped Tab Browser Extension and now use small extension instead of a big one, but I lack one menu with the list of all tabs (which displays the whole title).
I usually open a lot of tabs, and I only get a small icon to distinguish them. I wish I could jump to one, picking from a menu.
May 3rd, 2005 at 7:48 am
I would like a toolbar that allowed me to place icon’s/favicon’s on it. It would be similar to the bookmarks toolbar but only have icons (no text) to websites I regularly use on it and when I click on the icon it would open the website – kind of like a graphical shortcut I guess.
May 3rd, 2005 at 8:54 am
I am trying to write an application which works as a Mozilla/Firefox extnesion to manage network devices that already have an HTML based interface, namely those Wi-Fi AP/router boxes. Each vendor has a different idea of how that interface should be and even change it between firmware versions, that make life harder if you need to manage more than one box.
I am completely new to XUL, RDF, XBL, etc. So I am having a hell of a time. ;-(
May 3rd, 2005 at 10:42 am
I really, really want an extensions that checks my livemarks in a specified folder and notifies me when one is updated.
The notification should be similar with the way GMail Notifier or Firefox notifies you when you’re downloads are ready. I would love to see such an extension… :)
May 3rd, 2005 at 2:36 pm
I would like to see a smart URL expansion extension. It would expand both domain-level URLs and paths where shortcut forms of the URL have been keyed in. The model is how it works either in IE 5.2.x for Mac OS X or Safari.
For instance:
* If the keyed-in URL string is “shelterpub” (for example), it would expand to “http://www.shelterpub.com”, or if that does not exist, “http://www.shelterpub.net”, or if that does not exist, “http://www.shelterpub.org”.
If the keyed-in string were “shelterpub/order.html”, it would expand the domain by the same algorithm, and then add the rest of the path info.
May 4th, 2005 at 10:26 pm
I would enjoy something that lets me organize all those toolbars that I have (with all those nice Firefox goodies). A side toolbar with icons to toolbars, a single toolbar up top (except the standard addy) which can float and when clicked upon will open up all the other toolbars (think MS Office toolbars), etc… I find that having so many usefull toolbars gets in the way (especially on a laptop screen).
-thanks
May 5th, 2005 at 8:27 am
I have started to try and make this extension but (being of limited extension building knowledge) have so far failed a lot.
It would be useful to have an extension that would backup or “sync” your extensions to a folder(of your choice, of course). Allowing installation/updating to multiple machines a lot easier.
I find myself installing similar extensions on multiple machines. I’ve taken to saving the various extensions to my USB stick but currently I have to manually download the new xpi everytime an extension is updated. Which means checking my extension list against my folder somewhat often.
The extension I have in mind would use the update information from any installed extension, grab the latest xpi, and save it to a folder which is specified in the options section. that way you could click one menu item (or button in the extensions window) and all the current versions would be pulled down to your specified directory. There might even be a use for having a section in the options dialog to specify which extensions to grab. (incase some give errors, you could uncheck them, etc.)
The extension should also have some way of naming the files how the user wants them to be named. so maybe a default option (however the file is on the server) and then a custom option to name it with the name field from the installed extension plus the current version being downloaded. Or at least the ability to append the version to the file name. That way you would be able to know what version you have at a glance before installing.
thanks for the chance to maybe have this made! i literally just came to this site today (i come here a bunch to try and learn extension building) to see if i could find some more info and possibly ask you to just build the extension. then i saw the first post and thought “perfect, exactly what i needed!”
-cheers
May 5th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
I would like to see an extension that allows me to change part of a URI and load that in a new tab, say. E.g. to compare live and test versions of a page in different directories, or www vs dev in the domain. Preferably in the context menu, with editable defaults. That is. Say the live files are all on http://www.yourdomain.com and test pages are on test.yourdomain.com. The extension I have in mind would allow you to right click on the live page and select “view test version” (or vice versa), and it would change www to test and load that in a new tab.
-Chris
May 6th, 2005 at 2:10 am
What about a toolbar button that allows you to toggle on/off selected settings.. For example, when I go to certain sites I may want to turn off images, annoying JavaScript, Java applets or plugins. The user could select which features the button affects in an options panel. You could also use it to prevent downloading files, as a security thing.
May 6th, 2005 at 8:33 am
Hey, nice of you to ask. Well, with all the blogs and wikis and web editors I really do a lot of editing -increasingly large text chunks in area fields. I’d be very much happy if I had *find* and *replace* functions to use with these texts.
Thanks,
May 6th, 2005 at 11:34 am
First off, I want to thank you for making such a useful set of extensions. Why is it that you don’t put them on the firefox extensions page so the whole world could enjoy?
Now, I have two ideas, the second is more of a growth on the first.
I would like to see an extension, similar in concept to foxytunes, which allows you to control your instant messaging program from firefox. This would have to be done very carefully, as it could obviously suck very easily if it takes up too much space, isn’t easy enough to use, or various other problems.
The second somewhat extends the first idea into a shared browsing tool. This would allow you to share the site you’re currently looking at with a friend over the interweb. It might include two-way highlighting, instant messaging, or a more simple version could just rip the pages content/source and send it to a friend via email or something like that. Obviously, this one would be a massive task, and would probably take quite a while. I just figured I submit a couple more ideas for you to choose from, but whatever you do, you must keep making wonderful extensions!
May 7th, 2005 at 3:42 am
Note that some of the requests here could be done easily as Bookmarklets (http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/) or as Greasemonkey (extension) JavaScripts (http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/).
(for example, the live and test versions of a page idea above)
And, for people having difficulty creating extensions, someone has created a way to “compile” GmScripts into an actual FF extension. (for “simple” straight-JS requirements and coding — http://www.letitblog.com/greasemonkey-compiler/)
I like the guy’s idea of some type of toolbar that is like a favicon bookmark menu, of sorts, for URL’s. Or, you could think of it as like the Windows folder View menu item Large Icons option. (except they would be small favicons, and no text) Or, like a Window’s Desktop-like view of favicons on a “field”. That’s how they should be displayed. And, when you hover over the icon, a tooltip of the bookmark name should pop up as a memory jogger. When you right-click on an icon, you should be able to view and modify the properties of the bookmark, including the name, URL, a description?, and also be able to change the icon to some other icon, for those sites who don’t have a favicon specified, or you want to use one that makes more sense to you. That would be nice. And maybe some way to specify their viewing arrangment on the “field”, such as alphabetical by name or auto-arrange, etc. You should be able to drag and drop bookmarks and URL’s onto it. And it should probably be an icon on the FF menu toolbar that you click on to access. (maybe have a specifiable bookmark folder, like the FF Bookmarks Toolbar Folder, where these special group of bookmarks are stored?)
I also like the idea about the toolbar button(s) (or drop-down menu / sub-menu / context menu) that allow you to easily toggle on/off selected FF settings without having to go into Options.
(the WebDeveloper extension gives you some of this functionality, but developer-functions-limited)
That could also be nicely expanded, as well. It would be nice to be able to specify which of the items you want enabled or disabled for a given page and have them saved and automatically set when you visit that page. (like TURN OFF THE FREAKING SOUND!!!) Kind of like the way Greasemonkey allows you to include and exclude what sites you want a script to be loaded for. This extension would allow you to enable and disable each of the available settings and then include and exclude that NAMED “option pack” for autonmatic setting for one or more websites. (which could then be able to be easily enabled or disabled by the above-mentioned “toolbar” — actually, this could/should probably be two separate extensions) With the ability to reset the original values with an easy click, and also to reset to the default values each time FF is started. (maybe also a way to “lock” a setting, so, for example, you can turn off sound (or to a low level?!?) for a session without it popping back on as you surf)
Another cool extension would be a text entry (or ALL entry/selection?) backup / recovery feature that keeps track of what you type (and select? radios, boxes, selects, etc.) in a LOG so that if your computer freezes or crashes or the power goes out or WHATEVER!, you can go to the log and cut and paste your text (and see your selections?) to easily rebuild what you were doing instead of LOSING IT ALL!!! Which rarely happens, but always seems to occur when you most needed it not to. (like the odds of a dropped single-slice jelly bread sandwhich landing jelly-side down) Which is HIGHLY irritating, to say the least. (like when you type a GREAT reply to someone, a work of art, no less, and then BANG! gone forever because it’s just too irritating to try to redo it — like if I lost this post before it posted) If you wanted to get really fancy, you could have it automatically enter/set values when you return to the web page. (not easy?) There are also at least two ways to save the data: ‘incrementally’ (“keystroke”), or ‘intelligently’ (last best known complete entry value). The former possibly / probably being the easier / faster to log and save, but harder to recover. (? — either for you, or the user) There should also be time-stamped log entries, and URL’s of the pages where the data was being entered (of course), and perhaps some specifiable time-frame of when to save the entered data permanently (to disk — I’m sure you’ve seen these type of features on MS Word and other programs), and…??? You could get really fancy or sparse, depending on your programming and creative levels and abilities and time limitations.
I’ll be back if I think of some more.
And if you don’t do these, I might.
May 7th, 2005 at 9:17 am
Good lord, Bill. You won the longest comment contest, hands down.
Everyone, these are all good ideas. I (and anyone else out there) will try and sift through these and see which ones I can do. I’m in the middle of moving right now, so it may take me a while, but continue to throw out suggestions. It might give someone else the motivation to create something that we’d love to use but never knew existed.
May 8th, 2005 at 10:59 am
I’ve sometimes ended up at a page and wondered how I got there. I came up with an idea I called “Backstory” — an extension that would either massage History in some way to extract the breadcrumb trail that led to each destination or keep a history of its own. And make that history viewable and retraceable somehow, of course.
A Backstory breadcrumb trail might look something like this:
Home Page -> Google -> Some other page -> Current page
You could click any node in the trail and work your way backwards. (Like using the “Back” key — which would be fine if I didn’t so often Ctrl-click a link to open the new page in a new tab.)
But I have no clue how to code such a thing.
May 8th, 2005 at 7:21 pm
Here’s an extension that performs a few of the features requested above, plus much more. Would still be nice to have it separated out, I think.
Adds toggles (toolbar items) for Javascript, Images, Plugins, and Meta-redirects that work on a per-tab basis.
http://clav.mozdev.org/#tbx
Except I guess this isn’t too much different from WebDeveloper. His features are only accessible from the Menu and the Context Menu, tho.
But there are still some lacking.
Sorry (in a figure of speech sense) for the verbose comment above. Apparently I have way too much time on my hands. ;)
May 9th, 2005 at 7:25 am
I would like an extension that would allow me to run update on all my currently installed extensions. Having to run update for each on individually is quite annoying.
May 9th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
I would love to see an extension that allows Firefox to work with iSync.
Since signing up for .Mac a few months ago I started using Safari exclusively on my Mac and the bookmark sync was definitely one of the most useful features. However, I’ve now decided that I can’t live without find as you type and a couple of other Firefox features so I’ve switched back.
If you could figure out a way to get Firefox talking to .Mac I (and many other .Mac users) would be eternally grateful!
May 9th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
I am an attorney that specializes in Cyberlaw. I need a tool to do legal searches by state. There are hundreds of free sites supported by each state’s government. A tool that made these available quickly would be great. This is a real tool, not just something that looks cool – Matt
May 9th, 2005 at 2:12 pm
I’m baaa-aack. (Oh, the Horrors!)
First, the person who wanted the auto-update of extensions extension: That is already in FF 1.0.3. It checks for you and lets you know with a button in the upper right corner by the throbber. (either that, or I installed an existing extension that does it — ??) BUT, each extension has to have the new auto-update coding therewithin, and many of them don’t yet. So, …..?
I have two new extension ideas. (oops, 3)
One puts a (n actual) “Close” button on the Extension Manager dialog box/window. Right now you have to aim for the standard Windows [X] in the upper right corner. It would just be nice. And more user-friendly. (and, theoretically, ‘easy’ to do? — Come on! We know you’re a programming g0d! Too late to deny it now.)
Number two is something that would be pretty cool, imo. I’ve wanted this functionality for awhile. That being an extension that keeps a count of how many times you access a bookmark and keeps a special bookmark folder where it COPIES that link (leaving the original in the original location!) to that special folder, keeping the top N (selectable!) bookmarks in there (probably sorted by the count, high to low, since that’s the whole idea). So that folder ends up automagically being all of the sites that you frequent the most, and could probably use a quick known location/folder to get there. (like the ‘Personal Toolbar folder’, but auto, rather than gathering them up manually — I am apparently very lazy ;o) ) It would be a push down “list”, so, if a site increments up past the lowest count bookmark already in there, it goes in and the bottom one pops out. And any that are in there filter up the list as their count increments. (obviously — maybe automagically if it’s just a ’simple sort’) I think you could probably get “tricky” and even save the count in a special (illegal) tag in the (HTML format) bookmarks file, rather than keeping a separate database. That would probably be more than sufficient, since you aren’t going to need to do a search, or anything on that value. (unless you, or gnomes, accidentally delete the ’special folder’ and need to rebuild it?) I’m tellin’ ya, this would be, like, “way cool.”
At this late date (+/-) the bookmarks file should probably be in XML format, and will probably be changed to XML eventually, which, if I minimally understand the magical world of XML, you could add a ‘count’ tag/value in there ‘legally’. (?)
And there we have yet another idea for an extension? One that converts your bookmarks file into XML format and properly interfaces with Firefox accordingly. If I’m not mistaken, the ‘XML people’ (and you know who (whom?) you are) would bow at your feet if you did that one. ;o)
p.s. Why do so few ‘blogs’ NOT support ‘post preview’ and after-the-fact editing? ‘Twould be nice.
May 9th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
Oops. ‘Sorry’ about this.
There is an existing extension that puts your bookmarks onto the right-click context menu, which is something that I’ve wanted for awhile. (mostly so I can access my Bookmarklets that way)
But, it only adds the top bookmarks menu item, which was probably easiest to do.
However, I would like the ability to specify a ’starting folder’, as an option. It really needs that feature.
I’ll mention this to them, too, just in case they want to do it. But it is lacking in that respect, afai’c.
This existing extension, ‘Ook’, is at the same site I mentioned above.
http://clav.mozdev.org/#ook
May 9th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
I’d like to be able to set up filters on what form field values Firefox stores so that I can, e.g., block storage of 16-digit integers.
I’d really, really like better cookie blocking options, like Opera’s, in which I can make my accept/reject/accept for session decision apply to the domain instead of just the server. I’d also like to be able to view my cookies sorted by domain. (But some of this may be coming in 1.1 — I’m not up on the details.)
May 9th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
Regarding a favicon bookmark toolbar, that’s how I already use my conventional Bookmark Toolbar folder. I add links to it, and then set their names to blank in their properties. Favicon Picker helps with pages that don’t already have a favicon (or where I want greater specificity than the sitewide icon.) Then I have nearly all the functionality requested above.
What I would like to see in another extension is something to facilitate not displaying the names in the Bookmark Toolbar — a Toolbar-wide setting for show names or not show names, with a possible override on a per bookmark basis. Throw in being able to set icons for bookmark folders appearing in the Bookmark Toolbar (besides the theme’s generic folder icon,) and I’d have just about everything I could want there.
May 9th, 2005 at 7:49 pm
Thanks for soliciting ideas on this!
As a sports fan I would like an extension similiar to Forecast Fox that would check and update sports scores for my home teams. It could either either show these updates as a pop up/tooltip over the taskbar or in a special toolbar. I’m not sure if this is feasible but I thought if Forecast Fox works, perhaps….
May 10th, 2005 at 2:41 am
Firefox to OneNote
Just like the Powertoy: IE to OneNote.
I have been unable to find such an extension.
May 10th, 2005 at 10:19 am
I would like an extension called “define” that would work like this: highlight any single word, right-click, select “define”, and that word is submitted to whatever on-line dictionary you’ve specified; either in a new tab or a new window.
Thanks for asking!
May 10th, 2005 at 11:42 am
Joe, see Dictionary Search or Conquery.
And Glenn Wright (2d comment,) grouped tabs (and setting a single bookmark for the group, or setting a group as your home page) is a built-in feature.
May 10th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
I want something that can help me keep track of events I find on the web. Ideally I would be able to highlight html on a webpage, and the extension would be able to make a best guess on how to add it to my ical data or upcomming.org
May 11th, 2005 at 6:40 am
I would like an extension that would list my keyword shortcuts/keyword searches.
Just by pressing k it would display; descriptions (name if description is blank) and keywords.
May 12th, 2005 at 1:46 am
TBE has a great feature of bookmarking open tabs. It just creates a bookmarks folder where you tell it to, and fills it with the URLs for each tab you have open. This is about the easiest possible session management I can think of, and I kept me using TBE for a long time. Then I experimented a little and realized how much of TBE I _never_ use and switched to TabMix. But I _really_ miss my old session saving style. I actually tried it myself, but looking through TBE’s code is insane and Firefox seems to hate my modifications to your HelloWorld demo extension. If you have any tips on why it keeps telling me “… could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox”, or if you want to do this probly very easy extension yourself, I know I’d be grateful.
May 12th, 2005 at 4:50 am
re: Joe D’Agostino’s request for an extension that looks up word definitions in online dictionaries — there are one or more Bookmarklets that perform this feature already. See my link above or Google it.
p.s. Mucho thanks to Zed for the idea to use the Favicon Picker extension and blank-text bookmarks as a ‘favicon bookmark toolbar’ — works great!
May 12th, 2005 at 8:37 am
I would like an extension called ‘HTTP Upload’, which would be similar to a light version of FireFTP Extension but using ‘HTTP POST’ instead of the ‘FTP’ protocol. Why? In this way you can allow people to upload stuff to a website without having to setup an FTP account. HTTP uploading can already be achieved using HTML forms, but there are a lot of disadventages:
1. You cannot see a real progress bar. You cannot see which file is being uploaded.
2. Files exceeding file size limits can only be rejected after a full upload to the server (waste of time and bandwidth).
3. The ‘Browse’ button only allows one file to be selected at a time.
The ‘HTTP Upload’ extension could be focused towards image uploading and have more specific functions like an image preview, checking file type and image width & height before uploading.
Disadventage of this kind of extension is that it needs a counterpart at the server, which is a PHP, ASP or CFM script to process the HTTP POST. I can take care of that.
Thnx, Bart Claeys
May 13th, 2005 at 12:45 pm
I have a site that I would like to be able to update with links as I visit other sites. So I would visit a site and post it’s title, link, and a thumbnailed screenshot to my site. It’s a personal thing for me, but I’d pay someone to do it up right.
May 13th, 2005 at 5:28 pm
One thing I would REALLY like to see, and I don’t know if it can be done in an extension, but…
When you bookmark a site, the Bookmark ‘window’ (dialog?) defaults to “Bookmarks”, so, if you are grouping your bookmarks into folders, you have to select a folder every time from the drop-down list. (this gets pretty irritating if you are bookmarking a lot of sites, which I tend to do)
It would be nice if it remembered the last folder you stored a bookmark in and defaulted to that.
Because we do tend to surf in ’sessions’ of related site topics, more or less. I do, anyway.
btw — I mentioned the “add a ‘Close’ button on the Extension Manager dialog box/window” extension in a forum, and someone whipped one up that works well. Here is a link:
http://www.gary.elixant.com/firefox/close.xpi
May 14th, 2005 at 11:18 am
you should make the left/right buttons in firefox go to next page of a forum, or search result. The 2 buttons are useless as they are. It could have an online database that it checks if it doesn’t know how to go from google.com/results.cgi?1-10 to google.com/results.cgi?11-20, and it could just ask the user. This would be amazingly useful and might become one of the top extensions out there.
May 14th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
Well, although this might not be possible, I would like an easy way to completely sync (including themes, extensions, and various settings) Firefox across computers that are not directly connected by a network. It’d be nice to see all of my themes and extensions when I go to school and use it there. It would make installing a large number of extensions to a new Firefox installation much easier.
May 14th, 2005 at 9:06 pm
Wraparound Tabs: When tabs get too small to easily differentiate, a new row of tabs is started beneath the previous one. This is one of the few features Avant Browser still has over Firefox.
May 14th, 2005 at 9:25 pm
you guys, quite a few of these extensions (especially those dealing with URLs) could be done with a greasemonkey script. if you dont know (enough) javascript, you can always request the script http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScripts#head-6a176af0e3541b91734625dec4f3b8292439dd1d
May 14th, 2005 at 10:59 pm
Bjorn, check out Tab Mix. One of the options is to do exactly what you want.
http://tab-mix.info.tm/
May 16th, 2005 at 2:42 am
“I would like a toolbar that allowed me to place icon’s/favicon’s on it. It would be similar to the bookmarks toolbar but only have icons (no text)”
you can copy any bkmk, then delete the name, leaving only the icon. if that bkmk’s site doesn’t give favicon. “paste” one using faviconpicker extension. (posibly manually editing bkmk file wuold do same.
May 17th, 2005 at 1:11 am
I’d like the ability through an extension to have site’s by both bookmark and via a list be forced to have settings which are normally only available in a global on off or global static setting. Such as setting user agent for a bookmark or instead of just a bookmark specifically for a site such as say http://www.capitalone.com which still insists I don’t have a “proper” browser because it dosen’t like my user agent. I don’t know of other settings besides user agent but all that currently can’t be set except globally would be nice to have “captured” for use ONLY for specific sites and bookmarks while not affecting other currently open windows/tabs.
May 17th, 2005 at 11:49 am
This might be simple, or impossible, not sure what can be done at this level:
I occasionally find myself clicking on something that I’d just like to view, but either has an external viewer configured, or doesn’t, but Fx doesn’t think it knows how to display it itself.
I figure an additional item on the context menu for a link that *forces* something to be viewed as a particular mime-type (perhaps just text/plain to start with would be fine) would be quite handy.
I don’t always want to fire up XMLSpy for xml snippets, or have to choose some external handler for something just because it has a wacky extension and the server doesn’t know what to do with it.
May 17th, 2005 at 2:06 pm
I would like to see an SMS sender! A site like http://www.c4sms.com offers simple sms sending features, you can enable HTTP posting so you could enter your username + password and send an sms message
May 17th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
Thomas, I made an SMS extension a while ago.
http://roachfiend.com/archives/2005/03/06/teleflip/
May 17th, 2005 at 10:40 pm
Would it be possible to have an extention
that can select fonts/font sizes for the
various text components in FireFox?
Navigation text, Menu Item, Context Menu
NOT the websites your looking at just FF itself. Bugs the heck out of me I can’t use easy to read fonts that don’t include
confusing items Zeros like letter O #1 like lowercase L or uppercase I
I’ve got the fonts, but I’ve never found the way to make FF use them in the areas needed. Anyone else have this problem?
May 18th, 2005 at 6:03 am
Hi Eric,
Could you contact me on my email address please (gullanian [is at] gmail [dot] com).
I am interested in hiring you for a small piece of work if you are interested!
Regards,
Tom
May 18th, 2005 at 6:36 am
I was browsing one of my regular forums, and came across a poster requesting cheap inexpensive parental control software.
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x/a/tpc/f/99609816/m/899007243731/r/760009243731#760009243731
The posters requirements were fairly simple. He dosent want an application that searches for inapporpriate content and filters it.. Rather he simply wants to set a list of “allowed sites” that his daughter would be allowed to visit while using the computer.
It seems to me that this is perfect for a fairly simple Firefox extension. Some sort of password controlled “child lock” that, when activated, would only allow access to sites that are placed on a pre-defined “approved access” list. When the child is no longer using the computer, and the parent would like to use it again.. simply deactive the lock using a password. I would also include an option in the extension to determine whether it is activated by default on Firefox load, or whether it was session based.
This could also be quite useful for public access terminals, I would think.
Shoot me an email if you find any merit to the idea and would like any assistance.
May 18th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
http://news.com.com/Netscape+ready+to+launch+antiphishing+browser/2100-1032_3-5712331.html?part=rss&tag=5712331&subj=news
this story says netscape will have a feature that will alert users when they are on a site known to be less than completely trustworthy, is there any extension or any way to make an extension that might provide a simialar feature to FF users?
May 18th, 2005 at 7:11 pm
request 1: (should be very easy)
when hoovering over a bookmark in the bookmark sidebar or dropdown menu, the url should be shown in a tooltip (just like the standard behaviour of IE and a shame for FF)
request 2: (should be easy)
remember vertical scroll position of bookmark sidebar after closing and reopening (also standard behaviour in IE)
request 3: (can be hard)
never close FireFox:
even with the /prefetch:1 option, FireFox can be slow to start up, so, when closing (top right “x” & Alt+F4 & closing last tab), it should just close all tabs and minimize to system tray, so it can be really fast to show up again. (of course with a little extra menu to really close FF). I tried the “minimize to tray” extention, but Alt+F4 and last tab closing isn’t supported
(request 4:
like mentioned above: support icons for bookmark folders, again a standard behaviour in IE)
thx!!
CIAO!
VOODOOS!L
May 19th, 2005 at 7:37 am
Thanks for all the great work.
I would like to see an extension that not only dumps all one’s private info with one push of a button (a la “clear all” on privacy tab) but also “scrubs” history and cache etc (by overwriting with junk data etc) to assure non-retrievbility by bad guys and snoops. I have an extension that does the “clear all” bit, but doesn’t truly sanitize FF’s history. I’m talking something with some of the capabilities of that awful Evidence Eliminator bloatware but that doesn’t s-ck and is an extension! ;) I don’t know if this is outside the realm of what is possible in an extension as I have just been a greedy user and not a contrib to this noble FF phenomenon. Thanks again, Eric.
May 20th, 2005 at 11:50 pm
How about an extension to the Quick Search feature that allows you to send POST method data to search engines?
Please? ;)
May 21st, 2005 at 10:50 am
1. With your tooltip for links, I’d like the statusbar to autohide…
2. How about a “display menu” option, where the menu bar could be hidden…
Obviously I like my screen space. Best wishes.
May 22nd, 2005 at 2:04 am
I would like to vote for some of the extension ideas above, one of which I came here to suggest.
The tooltips for bookmarks showing the URL is really needed. I believe FF used to show the URL in the status bar, but it went away. If you have a link on your “personal bookmark toolbar” it pops up a tooltip. Just not anywhere else.
I would also like to have the “view as plain/text” option for some items that FF doesn’t know what to do with, and only wants to show with an external viewer, but can be viewed as plain text. Maybe a “View as Plain/Text” button on that dialog. I guess selectable mime types would be nice, but probably a bit harder. (?)
I also think the auto-hide of the status bar and the menu bar and other upper toolbars (group) would be nice. But I’m guessing that may not even be able to be done with an extension. Afaik, there is no “auto-hide” capability in XUL, tho you may be able to “spoof” it. (?)
I plan on extending the “Close Button” extension to add Close buttons to all of the dialogs that don’t have them in Firefox and Thunderbird.
btw — Do you do Thunderbird extensions, too? I like to put a CSS style on my emails of “width: 600px”, which is a pain going through the Format | Page Colors and Background… | Advanced Edit | Inline Style tab and entering the info every time. I would like this to be a permanent default thing. At least it remembers it for the session. Or, does anyone know how to accomplish this already?
May 22nd, 2005 at 3:30 am
a good extension would be a boss key for firefox something like this
http://www.mindgems.com/products/Boss-Key/boss-key.htm
but for firefox only.
May 24th, 2005 at 4:03 am
(@Gabriel & @Bill Donnelly)
hiding statusbar and toolbars IS already possible, the Extention ‘AutoHide’ is one of my favorites! http://www.krickelkrackel.de/autohide/autohide.htm
CIAO!
VOODOOS!L
May 24th, 2005 at 10:04 pm
I would REALLY like an extension that prohibits sites resizing my main browser window (to full screen, for example). It’s a really annoying thing to do.
May 25th, 2005 at 11:52 am
how about a plugin that lets you make plugins without having to deal with writing the plugin.
like drag drop little boxes and draw lines between them sort of thing, that’d rock… each box would represent an associated component in firefox that you can manipulate. e.g. ContextMenu
you would be able to edit a Properties pane to change details like color, text, links, parameters, etc. e.g. the ContextMenu’s border style.
you could also provide a transform widget that things could be connected to which would allow coders to enter in code to manipulate inputs/outputs.. e.g. the a transform that takes in a Name, URL, and produces a PopupMenuItem… you would link (Name) -> (MyTransform) and also (URL) -> (MyTransform) and then have (MyTransform) -> (ContextMenu)… then the user edits the code inside MyTransform, which would be a javascript method that gets auto-generated that takes the parameters that were “connected” and returns the connected ou tput. then the user could type in some code that maybe looks for ? marks inside the URL parameter and shoves the CurrentlySelectedText in at that point.
at that point essentially the transform would produce a context message that could for example go to the animenfo website’s search engine and lookup the name of an anime you selected on a webpage. all this with very little coding effort by the “plugin” author through your plugin system.
so basically something akin to what shaderworks does would be nice… but for moz plugins… check it out for ideas
http://www.shaderworks.com/
May 25th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
Greg, take a look through
Tools > Options > Web Features > Advanced
May 27th, 2005 at 2:39 am
I would like an extension that allows you to export your currently installed extensions or at least a html file with direct links to the currently installed extensions.
On that page you could then select which extensions you want and install them with just on click
May 27th, 2005 at 8:32 pm
Kristof, ListZilla kind of does that.
http://roachfiend.com/archives/2005/03/03/listzilla/
May 27th, 2005 at 8:46 pm
is it possible for you to make an extension wich can do the following things:
Open a group of bookmarks with a keyword (very weired that the add keyword function doesnt appear when you right click a folder or a subfolder). This would the tideous –> bookmarks toolbar folder –> choose folder –> choose sub-folder and then at the bottom choosing –> open in tabs. Alternatively like i do –> choose folder –> middle-click subfolder. Smoother would be –> (for example for forum sites) f + enter = opening lets say six forum sites!
And for example when in the bookmarks toolbar folder make it possible to
choose and open more than one bookmark at the same time. sometimes this could be very useful i think. ctrl + click to mark more than one random bookmark and then enter to open. (and offcourse leaving the usual leftclick to open option intact). You should be able to open bookmarks from the bookmarks toolbar folder like you manage files in a file manager like explorer or Total commander etc…This would also be convinient for your RSS-feeds. Its just so boring to repeat the route all the time. With tabbed browsing you almost always have several tabs open at once. One should also be able to holde the folder open and drag bookmarks from the folder to the tab-bar.
It seems that more people than me like this idea, but noone seems to have the know-how to do something about it.
Anyone?
May 28th, 2005 at 5:15 am
I requested here an extension that remembers the bookmark sidebar scrollposition above, but now the latest version of the great extension ‘Autoclose Bookmarks & History Folders’ has been extented with this behaviour on my request :)
http://www.sephiroth-j.de/mozilla/
CIAO!
VOODOOS!L
May 28th, 2005 at 8:25 pm
How about an extension that allows your bookmarks to be opened as a web page in a tab. An additional would be a slick looking menu type bookmark page that could be exported.
Thanks for the BugMeNot extension, I use it daily, and it was one of the reasons that I switched to firefox.
May 28th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
IMG-PAUSE!
An extension that uses filters to speed page loading time. Like say pause any images above 15k or whatever and let the page load by itself then the image would load afterword or in realtime pause the image while it’s in the mits(sp) of loading.. Thus a great thing for us dialup users or user with slow connection.
Key features
-Uses filters such as size the of image or flash.
-Pause Image on the fly Accessible through context menu
-Speeds loading time
I have yet to see anything like this. Even tried my hand at this, no success. :(
Heres a plea. Oh please oh please oh please. ;D
May 30th, 2005 at 11:43 am
Here is an idea:
A word filter sort of extension for FF
It should be like a box where we could put several words and it converts them to the asteriks **** whenever found on a page. Useful for safety purposes and I was surprised that this hasn’t been done already. Thanks Alot!
May 30th, 2005 at 1:35 pm
I’d like to see a bittorrent extention for FF… with a setting about the amount of Data to transmit (equal to recived, x MB, constantly, etc)
May 30th, 2005 at 9:34 pm
I love the bugmenot extention.
In a similar vein, there are a million web sites in the naked city, and they all want your cookies or they won’t play nice.
I would love to have an extention that would “accept all cookies and delete them when exiting this site” option.
There are hundreds of pages that i have only visit once, why the hell should i be burdened with their cookies untill the year 2029?
May 31st, 2005 at 1:51 pm
Whenever I see something cool on a page, I like to see how somebody coded it. But the problem is that sometimes the markup/javascript behind the page is terribly cluttered. I would like to be able to hilight an element and in some way trigger the view source. The source would have the appropriate text hilighted. Or, if I forget to hilight, perhaps just lightly color the background of the source near where the cursor is on the viewing page (as in what the window is displaying, or, if I right-click->view page source, then the code near where I clicked). Does this make sense? Would anyone else see a use in this?
May 31st, 2005 at 4:55 pm
I like Kevin’s idea of making View Source jump to the highlighted section of the page, if it’s possible to do that. It’s be useful to me as well, as long as it’s compatible with the HTML Validator extension (the one that uses Tidy), since that also overlays the view source window.
I also would like to see the tooltips for bookmarks idea done. I believe the Suite, at least in some themes, displays tooltips with the full title and URL of bookmarks when you hover over them in the menu, but Fx doesn’t seem to have the same feature.
Finally, an idea of my own: An extension to allow rearranging status bar panes. I’ve got a number of extensions that add stuff to the status bar; I don’t know what makes them appear in the order they do, but it’s not the order I would prefer them to be in.
———–
Way up at the top, the very first comment asks for an extension to detach the sidebar. I don’t know if it existed when that comment was posted, but there is one now. It’s called EZ Sidebar, but it’s not on UMO. I think I saw it on either Extension Mirror or Extension Room, though. Besides allowing detachment of the sidebar, it also reinstates most of the Suite’s sidebar functionality, like the F9 shortcut and the ability to switch panels from the sidebar itself.
June 1st, 2005 at 8:27 pm
I’d love to see quepasa implemented as a plugin. Quepasa is a tool that generates unique passwords based upon a single passphrase and some identifying feature of the site (like the hostname). Users only need to remember the passphrase, and no passwords are stored.
It basically provides unique passwords for every site that you don’t have to remember.
It’s shockingly simple and described at
http://quepasa.sourceforge.net/
- Marty
June 2nd, 2005 at 2:19 am
Not sure if this was suggested or not…read only half way through, but this was used in an earlier extension but is no more and is simple..
You could double-click a tap and it would be removed instead of right clicking it and removing it that way. It’s much faster to just double click it to rid of it.
June 3rd, 2005 at 4:23 am
@GASHWOUND
Use the TabMix extension, it can do what you requested, and many more! -> http://tab-mix.info.tm/
@ Kevin and Ryukage
You are requesting something that is a DEFAULT feature within FireFox !!??
Just select something on a webpage, right-click your selection and chose the context-menu option: ‘View Selection Source’…your selection will then also be selected within the source display…works great :)
CIAO!
VOODOOS!L
June 4th, 2005 at 11:15 am
One more. For Thunderbird.
A way to specify the color of the background line for emails based on a search or regex so that emails from certain people can be made to stand out. They should be named groups so you can specify “Family”, “Friends”, etc. The search expression should be multiples separated by commas. If you want to get fancy, allow searching of more than the “From:” item. The colors should allow any hex value. Maybe with some default color selection box/table of colored squares and give you a preview of what it will look like as you specify the colors.
June 4th, 2005 at 11:57 am
I want the Ctrl-F Find feature integrated into the Status Bar.
.
.
Additonally any terms searched in the Search Box should automatically be inserted onto bar to allow for clicking of those terms in order to navigate to those words on a web page.
June 4th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
I would like the current bookmark sync tool to have a CVS-like upload. This would make it faster to up/download, and allow some type of diff-view and merge.
June 5th, 2005 at 9:53 am
i would like a on-the-fly search and replace plugin.
very simple, in the options you get 2 fields per line, left field is the regexp you want replaced, the right hand field is what you want it replaced with.
Basicly every page you view has the search and replace applied to it before its rendered.
this would allow me to do stuff like
target=”_blank” > target=”_current”
as the most immediate example to come to mind.
i dont imagine it would be teribly involved, however im sure many ppl would find it immensley usefull.
June 6th, 2005 at 10:08 am
Oke, this might me be a bit difficult to explain, but I’ll try.
I’d like a sidebar to organise my thought while browsing, store snipits of text and quick links.
Let me explain. Often, when doing research on something I read a lot of pages and see multiple link or text fragments that are interesting. It would be great if I could just select some text and drag it to the side bar. This would store the text, along with the URL where it can from. It should also be possible to drag and drop URL there. And to keep track of everything it should be possible to use groups to categorise items, and a search option.
Basically it looks like the bookmarks bar, but it would have more features.
June 7th, 2005 at 11:45 am
I’d like it if an extention would allow me to combine toolbars into a single line. many extentions i have currently do not allow this. Perhaps a method to limiting the size of the address bar aswell?
June 8th, 2005 at 10:29 am
Where is PaNIC extension?? I want PaNIC! I need PaNIC! Please tell me about this extension.
June 9th, 2005 at 5:45 am
For Marty (re: Quepasa) – https://addons.mozilla.org/quicksearch.php?q=password§ion=A has 3: Password Composer, PasswordMaker, and SecurePassword Generator.
June 9th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
I want an extension that stops sending the referer to items on the page.
I know there are porn motives that would shift this, and an existing extension that spoofs the referer.
However my use is much simpler. I have a forum, and on it people post images. These images often come from other sites. Those sites often use mod_rewrite or similar to detect requests that do not originate from their servers.
However the majority of those sites allow the images to work if directly typed into the address bar. The only difference between this and inline images, is that a referer is passed across.
So I want an extension that strips referer information for all of the items on a page.
June 9th, 2005 at 4:26 pm
You know how Apple’s desktop has all those icons at the bottom that get enlarged when the mouse goes near them ? There should be such a feature for tabs in a Firefox window. Would be really awesome (not to mention really helpful for people who have a lot of tabs open).
June 9th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
Could you please give consideration to creating a Thunderbird extension that would automatically add a different set of wpoison-type addresses (http://www.monkeys.com/wpoison/) to a signature every time you composed a massage? I do a /lot/ of usenet posting, and would /love/ to choke spammers on ‘bogaddies’ (bogus addresses). I can see it /very/ quickly becoming the number one extension for usenet posters.
With a little bit of tinkering in the Perl script, I changed WP to generate a .sig file like this one:
————–
Thnik about it!
Deadly_Dad
uncloud@theocrat.prealveolarc.net aquocellolitis@antivaccinatorv.org
Lisa@agatizel.tt myorrhexis@Mongolize.coreflexedd.mil
————–
Considering I don’t know /how/ to program in Perl, I think I did pretty good, though it /would/ be nice if the two colums lined up and there was something to make sure that each line wouldn’t exceed the line length. Currently, I use a .bat file to refresh the .sig file every time I log on, but having an extension do it live would be sooooo sweet. (And would /seriously/ piss off all those spammers, besides!)
HTH!
Keith
June 9th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
I’d like a means to allow a user to customise browser screen elements graphically, similar to the ‘Desktop settings’ in Windows.
A user would be presented with a ‘mockup’ of the browser screen selements and could click on an element, bringing up the editable properties for the selected element. At present, a user needs to edit the userChrome/userContent etc files manually which isn’t user-friendly for the majority of people.
June 10th, 2005 at 2:44 am
I’d like to see an extension that works like ccleaner that we could either add to one of our menus or add a button (preferable) to a toolbar. Something that would allow us to check off what exactly we want to clear from the privacy list before closing the browser.
I like to clear my history and saved form information and cache every once in a while and this would make it much easier to just hit one button before closing the browser.
It might also be kinda cool to put an option on there to clear those options after every browser session.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
June 11th, 2005 at 9:17 am
I would like an extension that would allow you to reorganize the search box. For example, you could delete engines without going in to C://. You could also be able to move engines up and down to organize it. So all of your google types would be together, etc.
June 11th, 2005 at 10:09 am
It should be possilbe to delete separate form’s autofill entries. I like the way this is possible within IE: select the entry in the form autofill list and press the delete key to remove it from the list…
very easy and straightforward, but yet not standard within FireFox :(
CIAO!
VOODOOS!L
June 12th, 2005 at 1:06 pm
Not quite what I’m looking for. View Selection Source only displays a fragment of the source code—just the single node containing the selection—which often isn’t enough to see how the “cool feature” was constructed. I want to see the whole source for the entire page, but scrolled to the point where the selection cursor is located. I think that’s what Kevin is asking for as well.
June 12th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
Sorry for double-posting, decided to comment on this too:
Tab Mix is buggy. In some themes it causes the tabs to become visually distorted (the end caps fall off—try it with Plastikfox and you’ll see what I mean), and in all themes when a background tab finishes loading the foreground tab jumps back to the top of the page. Also, Tab Mix may be overkill if you only want a few of the features, so there’s no harm in having smaller extensions for individual features.
However, that said, there’s an extension called “Tab Clicking Options” that also does what Gashwound wants.
June 13th, 2005 at 5:19 am
I’ll bet you’re a little bored of suggestions now ;-)
I’d like, upon receiving a 404, to ignore the error page and retrieve the most recent version in web.archive.org[1], or, if that doesn’t exist, google cache[2].
1: web.archive.org/web/999999999/www.example.com/page.html
2: http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:www.example.com
Maybe it could be announced at the top like “blocked a popup”…
‘diggler’ provides access to these things but it’s awkward and clumsy and non-automatic, and does additional things that I don’t want.
June 13th, 2005 at 5:23 am
I just remembered another idea: a button or something to switch off/on all history, form memory and other recording. It has _several_ uses.
June 16th, 2005 at 2:36 pm
I’d love an extension that disabled those annoying javascript alert and error boxes – like FF’s built-in pop-up blocking, the extension could relegate alerts/errors to a little icon in the statusbar. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’d imagine it’s simple to implement, if indeed possible.
June 16th, 2005 at 8:16 pm
I don’t know ifd this could be done through an extension or not but.. I really miss the way bookmarks were listed in the older Netscape browser. I hate having to scroll down a large list of folders to find the one that has the bookmarks I’m using at the moment. I liked the way the older version listed all the bookmarks across the screen up/down left/right. If I found another browser that came close to the features of Mozilla and had the older Bookmark listing abaility, I would switch in the blink of an eye.
JTMcD.
June 17th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
I’d love some more powerful page navigation shortcut features. On a page, as I type a Find term, I’d like to not only jump to the first instance of the Find term (as implemented today), but to have all matching search terms highlighted without having to click the Highlight button. Also, it would be wonderful to be able to jump directly to text entry fields (kinda like TAB except it jumps right to text fields, and skips links). So many pages have text fields that you need to use the mouse to get to, since TAB takes too long with all th e hyperlinks on the page.
June 18th, 2005 at 12:09 am
I’d like to see an option to place a “toggle” button on the tool bar to turn cookies on and off. I hate having to open up tools-options- ect.
June 19th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
There’s usually extra space on the sides of a page but they almost all require vertical scrolling so I try to use as little of the top and bottom of the screen as possible. So I would like to be able to put the tabs in the sidebar. Maybe they could be arranged vertically as if the tab bar were turned ninety degrees or if someone prefers they could be horizontal tabs stacked vertically.
June 20th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
I face this problem in offline browsing where links are formed like this
file:///d:/www.here.com/audioindex.html
now firefox translates it to this
file:///d:/www.here.com/audio%5Cindex.html
and failes to work…..
2nd and last one…. some images file to load even when they exists and when I checked their URL I saw this….
file:///e:/www.here.com/..%5Cimages%5Ctop.gif
while it should be
file:///e:/www.here.com/images/top.gif
I think FF failes to translate ‘..’ I dont know if there is any plugin/solution for this.
Thanks
June 22nd, 2005 at 1:01 pm
Just a small, one, a simple right click option to open a link using a php proxy, as I know many people who have proxy filters, at home or at work, that get annoyed when you want to have a quick look for something and the results always come back as filtered content, or the page your viewing doesn’t display properly because of certain features that are block. I was thinking on doing this myself if I had the knowledge and the free time.
June 23rd, 2005 at 4:00 pm
How about an extension that would let us activate extensions without having to reboot FF?
June 26th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
THE PaNIC would be nice to have if you get it agan email me Aperfect.chaos@gmail.com
June 28th, 2005 at 5:49 pm
This would be an extension for Thunderbird.
I’d like to be able to have multiple ‘New Mail Notification’ sounds. Ideally you’d be able to configure a different sound for each email account AND assign different sounds for individual senders.
Did that make sense? I have 3 different email addresses and my wife has one. She’d like to be able to tell without looking whether an incoming message is for her or me. She’d also like to be able to tell if an incoming message to her is from me or someone else. She’s disabled and spends most of the time in the bedroom away from the computer and relies on the new mail notification sound a lot.
Thanks,
Fred
June 28th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
I think a simple image manipulation extension would be good, Right click any image->flip/mirror. Fun for everyone.
June 30th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
an extension that blocks ads that would be ingenious.
July 1st, 2005 at 5:20 am
Extension request: how about column view for favorites is in myie2?
http://members.aol.com/kylde001/columns.jpg
regards
Kylde
July 1st, 2005 at 6:59 pm
Hi,
The only really urgent extension needed, IMO, is one that would properly backup all of firefox’s settings, themes, extensions, etc automatically every so often. That way, if firefox were to get corrupted, it could be fixed quickly and painlessly.
If you can develop an extension that solves this problem, I am sure you could make people much happier.
Thanks!
July 3rd, 2005 at 10:47 am
I don’t know if this is possible to do in an extension, but I would like some enhancements to the JS open target property that supports Firefox tabs.
Like _blank, they would open windows accordingly, as:
__tab ==> open in a tab in the current browser window and focus to it
__bgtab ==> open in a tab in the current browser window, but in the background
If you can do these, then you might as well add:
__bgblank ==> open in a new browser window, but in the background (no focus)
(or __blankbg)
And anyone who doesn’t have the extension installed would just operate ‘normally’ and name the windows as the target name.
I put two underlines in front of the target names to show that they are like the currently supported special names, but “enhancements”.
They will probably add this functionality to FF at some point, but who knows when. It could be years.
July 3rd, 2005 at 8:32 pm
’sticky’ weblinks so that the mouse pointer will move more easily to click a weblink. Say when you get within 4-8 pixels of a hyperlink the pointer ’sticks’ to it to more easily navigate.
July 5th, 2005 at 4:32 am
I like Dan’s Sticky-link idea :-)
CIAO!
VOODOOS!L
July 6th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
I would LOVE for Gmail to work correctly in Firefox, but I guess this is the wrong place… right?
July 6th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
Gmail works just fine in Firefox.
July 7th, 2005 at 2:11 pm
Have a good firefox extension idea?
July 7th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
I’d love to have an extension that will show me every document object loaded (i.e. frames, iframes, etc) into the current tab/window. I can then select from the list of documents to view the actual source code as it was sent to the browser (I don’t want to re-query the server or see the rendered HTML–I want the actual source code that was sent.)
Right now it’s a pain to troubleshoot applications that post to hidden frames as there’s no easy way within Firefox to see the document’s source.
July 8th, 2005 at 12:41 am
I also would like to control the contact list of Miranda in a sidebar of Firefox…would be wonderful.
July 8th, 2005 at 12:55 am
I’d like to see an extension that slides the sidebar in from the left, as opposed to it just appearing.
Eye candy I know, but I think it’d look good.
It could be called “Slidebar”…. ;-)
July 8th, 2005 at 1:14 am
A FreeChess client would be superb. I like chess and I like Firefox, and there is no quality cross platform chess client available yet.
July 8th, 2005 at 1:16 am
haven’t got the time at the moment to read all the above, so i don’t know if this has already been requested. an extension that determines why a broken extension no longer functions. i have tried everything i know of to get needlesearch to function properly again. it still works from the context menu but the toolbar refuses to load thereby making it impossible to add or edit entries.
July 8th, 2005 at 1:37 am
I’d like to see an extension that launches the Microsoft Terminal Server/Citrix client when a user clicks on an external link on a seperate, internal network. If the extension is able to use DNS to find out if the domainname in an URL is external (i.e. NXDOMAIN is returned), it could put the URL in the clipboard and launch the client. Letting the user just copy the URL to the webbrowser on the “outside”.
July 8th, 2005 at 2:15 am
In one of those strange sort of coincidences that life seems to throw at you, Asa blogged about this cool Javascrip aplication, while my friend showed me another and you posted this request.
Looking at the below link you’ll see what I’m talking about.
http://trimpath.com/demos/nextaction_static1/nextaction.htm
It seems like one could impliment this schedualing system with a firefox extension. The interface could be much the same with possible additions of sidebar navigations. You could create tasks and actions that need to be done, drag and drop them places, choose drop down menu’s of it’s status (urgent, important, school, work, etc) and place them in an extended calander. Then this information would be saved in an (xml file?) and ties to either ntp or system time would warn you with a nonintrusive popup (bottom left hand corner?) at intervals, or when you’ve told it to remind you to do task X.
This could be tied with a simple popup (boarderless like the gmail notifier popups) that could have a basic calander and you could click through to see what was going on (have upcoming tasks marked in red).
While I don’t think an application like this would ever replace something like Outlook 2003 or other calandering aplications, it would be a great boon to those of use that keep firefox on use in memory sticks (this way we could keep our calanders with us at all times).
Any sort of way to import/export to/from PDA’s/Outlook/Evolution would be super super cool.
July 8th, 2005 at 2:17 am
extension to update cookie/popup blocking domains from a central place
July 8th, 2005 at 3:45 am
MacWarrior TrailBlazer
Something like this would be very very nice, I hate searching my history with meaningless titles …
With improvements made to 1.1, it is possible to make such an extension, I just don’t know where to start …
July 8th, 2005 at 3:50 am
This might be simple or impossible – An extension that incorporates the address of a saved page into its html, like the behaviour of I.E.
You can find the address of any saved page by viewing its source.
I often save pages with interesting links on rather than bookmarking them (in case they cease to exist), but if the saved page doesn’t have a home link it’s impossible to reload the latest version.
I’m surprised no one else has requested this as its the one thing I really miss since permanently moving to Firefox.
July 8th, 2005 at 5:49 am
Thunderbird extension (if I’m allowed to suggest one). I switched from Eudora, which has a “Send At” feature. This has now finally been added as an extension on the extensions page, but from the comments, it looks like it could use some help from somebody who knows how to code (I, unfortunately, do not).
And, as with everybody else, thanks for asking our opinions.
July 8th, 2005 at 5:52 am
2 possibilities:
** an extension that adds a button to firefox that will display itself whenever RSS feeds are found (like the live bookmark one), but then subscribes your thunderbird to the feed in one click. (this is the one I really, REALLY want to see.)
** something that allows more than 2 simaltaneous downloads (there’s gotta be a setting to fix this, but i can’t find it anywhere on google).
thanks!
July 8th, 2005 at 6:24 am
I’d love to see an extension that forces caching of form data on back/forward, even when the html states to discard it. I’ve had way to many instances where I accidentally navigate away from such pages and anything I’ve entered is lost.
July 8th, 2005 at 7:43 am
I would like to see an Ogg Vorbis music player extension for firefox, that would work with sites like http://www.ind-music.com
July 8th, 2005 at 7:58 am
The one thing I miss from my pre-saved days (myIE2) is the ability to pop open the bookmark sidebar simply by moving your cursor near the edge of the window. There used to be an extension that did this for pre-1.0 FF, but it didn’t really work correctly – it would open the sidebar, but “push” the page content over. What would be nice is if it could be laid “over” the page content.
July 8th, 2005 at 8:19 am
Wow, you got a lot of responses.
I would love to see an extension that made the tab bar able to expand to 2 – 3 rows deep. I often open lots of tabs, and like the #2 & 3 responses from the top, each tab gets very small. It would be great if the user could customize the number of rows, and how many tabs are open before the extension changes to multiple rows.
Thanks!
July 8th, 2005 at 8:19 am
I’d love the following.
Every now and then, I’ll surf/link to a page, that isn’t in my native tounge (English). Not a problem, Google Translate (Language Tools) will solve this for me… but…
What I would like, is the ability to highlight some text (e.g. a Blog Post), and right click, choose say… “Lucky Translate”, which would open a new tab, and:
a.) Attempt to determine (based on some key words) what language the source is in, and if it can;
b.) Auto Translate to my specified language (e.g. English)
I would think that this would be fairly simple… yet very helpful!
Cheers!
July 8th, 2005 at 8:35 am
maybe some hing that does link prefetching? (eg pre-loads all or some links on a page )
So you can get super speedy surfing on DSL cable ;-)
Steven
July 8th, 2005 at 8:38 am
Just found an extension that does what I was looking for: Flowing tabs
>.
Only problem is that it doesn’t work with Tabrowser Preferences (and the site incorrectly states that TbP includes this fuction). Can you make one that doesn’t interfear?
Thanks!
July 8th, 2005 at 10:20 am
I just had this crasy idea…
What about an extension that can simulate the page rendering of other browsers by using javascript and CSS?
It would have been really nice just to have a button on the toolbar for opening the page in many different (simulated) browsers at once.
I’m not talking about completely recreating other browser. Just copy the most common quirks in other browser to ease the pain of creating good XHTML/HTML documents.
Feasible?
July 8th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
A horizontal splitter would be really nice thing. Then you can split the content of the current page and view the upper part of a page while viewing the lower part.
July 8th, 2005 at 3:16 pm
I second a Boss Key. A configurable hotkey that will send Firefox to the tray, but can then be used as a global hotkey to restore it. If not only to hide the window in traditionally Boss Key-esque fashion, but also to remove Firefox from the taskbar without closing it completely while you’re not browsing.
July 8th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
How about a XPI editor/viewer that would allow you to easily inspect the extension after downloading it, but before installing it. Maybe somewhat like cromEdit, only with what’s inside the XPI file.
If it hasn’t happened already, it must be only a matter of time before we get hostile XPIs. Such a viewer would enhance the open source “many eyes” advantage.
July 8th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
Eesh! That’s a big list; so I’ll be brief.
If a page is already open in another tab, left-clicking a link to that page should just switch to the tab it’s already open in; middle-clicking shouldn’t be affected.
July 8th, 2005 at 5:43 pm
I would like to see what I call “grouped-browsing”. See what I mean here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=163637&highlight=
I’am DAM_2, :P
July 8th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
I would love to see a powerful cookie management extension. I’m currently browsing with “ask me every time” because I object to certain cookie usages. However, the factors I base my usage on are more than just the domain name: whether the cookie-setting site is on another domain (or another sub-domain) from the one I’m currently viewing, how long the cookie lasts (I just immediately rejected a cookie that would not expire for 25 years!), how many cookies I have already accepted from the site, whether the site has “ad” anywhere in its domain name, and many more I probably can’t think of right now.
I like to be in control, but I don’t like the interrupted web experience, so something that automates this effort for me would be wonderful.
The ideal implementation would allow a set of ‘cookie filters’ to be defined, each of which allowing a set of the above factors to be defined. Something that will let me block more than 5 cookies lasting longer than a month each from *.example.com, whilst allowing me to automatically accept the “SID” cookie from another.example.com would be perfect.
Bonus marks for allowing a ‘delta’ function to warn on specified cookies whose content significantly changes since the last ‘revision’, defined, say, via a regular expression. Certain common cookies with a standard name and format (thinking PHPSESSID) could easily be handled.
Yes, I do know they’re out to get me :-)
July 8th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
How about a diaper changing extension for new parents who use FF.?
July 9th, 2005 at 12:33 am
If you really need a yearlostworthy project, you’d probably remember that Opera is heading to implement an integrated BitTorrent client. However, those torrents are not so mighty, they need seeding semi-servers and are just a little step above the distributed webproxy.
So comes a brilliant idea to integrate two of the best open source projects: a browser (Firefox) and a client for ed2k network (eMule).
It has different amazing applications:
1) Any webserver would be able to start marking its large files (100+ Mb) with e2dk hashes (via, for example, rel=”…” attribute, see HTML 4.01 section 12.2), thus reducing webserver’s own traffic and bandwidth consumption, redirecting the download to ed2k. Pure ed2k links, used now (href=”ed2k://…”), are not backward-compatible with ed2k-unaware web readers.
2) Lugdunum (open source ed2k search server) could be altered to allow searching for files by their web URLs. So if a file is “404 not found” in the Web, it can still be found as shared in ed2k by some more lucky downloaders. And, even in existing lugdunum, it’s possible to search by filename.
3) It’s much easier for an integrated ed2k client to reduce ed2k traffic when the user starts downloading from the Web, and to advance ed2k downloads when the user does not any Web downloads, thus utilizing the connection in much more effective way than traditional (external) ed2k clients do.
4) Power of XUL overlays would bring lots of diversity to ed2k mods. Development is faster when you don’t need to get and recompile the whole source code.
July 9th, 2005 at 2:54 am
Hi,
There are 2 extensions I would like.
When a URL is displayed on a page but is not stored as a hyperlink, I would like to highlight it then select “open in new tab� (middle click), as I currently have to copy & paste it to the address bar of a new tab.
The 2nd extension would detect when you try to start a new instance of firefox and give you the option of opening a new instance or opening a new tab on an existence instance.
July 9th, 2005 at 7:56 am
I’d love a nice kiosk browsing extension that would bundle all the tools necessary to lock and to customize FF so as to use it in schools,librairies…
Easy if possible because my librairian is not what i call a computer wizard ;-)
July 9th, 2005 at 8:14 am
I think an extension that pulls the browser out of the dark ages would be one that easily facilitates a simple yet super powerful rich text mode.
Arguably Midas does this but poorly (IMHO, sorry to the Midas guys)
I’m sure it could be done better though.
July 9th, 2005 at 8:15 am
I think an extension that pulls the browser out of the dark ages would be one that easily facilitates a simple yet super powerful rich text mode.
Arguably Midas does this but poorly (IMHO, sorry to the Midas guys)
I’m sure it could be done better though.
July 9th, 2005 at 8:17 am
I think an extension that pulls the browser out of the dark ages would be one that easily facilitates a simple yet super powerful rich text mode.
Arguably Midas does this but poorly (IMHO, sorry to the Midas guys)
I’m sure it could be done better though.
July 9th, 2005 at 8:51 am
A “Merged Tabs” extension would be awesome. For instance: you click on a tab and drag it onto another one, and they merge to form a “split screen” tab. Very useful for someone making a webpage with a browser-based editor: they could see their changes very easily. Also useful for someone writing an email based on the contents of a webpage: one half of the screen for the email composer, and one half for the webpage.
Joseph Wilkinson
July 9th, 2005 at 11:11 am
I haven’t read all comments, so I don’t know if this has been suggested yet, but I would like to have extension similar to x (by Chrish Neale) that clears privacy data (history, cache, cookies), but I would like it to only clear data from current site I am visiting or data from current browser session. I don’t want it to clear all my history and cache.
This is because at home, we use same user for everyone at our family and everyone uses same profile in firefox. Sometimes I just would want to clear things like webmail, bank… other sensitive things from cache that I don’t want others to get access to.
July 9th, 2005 at 2:06 pm
Title tooltips to show up in html in Thunderbird / link hrefs to show in Tb’s statusbar if they don’t already etc
I’ll admit I’m mainly a KMail user.
[ clav should have the credit for x ]
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog on 05.08.05 10:59 am – perhaps HIGH or something based on it (http://www.squarefree.com/extensions/high/)
July 9th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
My favorite feature in firefox is how I can go to the address bar, and type in :google roachfiend and it will take me to the google search results for roachfiend. However, I would love to be able to use the other google search products such as google local, map, froogle, etc in that same fashion.
I assume an extension would just intercept address bar input and format based on some predefined strings (such as it does already with google). Thanks!
July 10th, 2005 at 11:00 am
That doesn’t need an extension – look for bookmark keywords in the various resources; forum, wiki etc
July 10th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
MNG support in an extension is something a lot of people have been hoping for since it was removed from the main Mozilla source, see bug 18574 for some code
July 10th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
MNG support exists already.
I’m going to close this topic down now; it’s gotten kind of large. There have been some really good ideas thrown around here, maybe a few of them can come to fruition. I might open up a similar topic at some point in the near future.
Thanks!